Sunday, August 24, 2008

"HILLARY'S WOMEN" IS 2008 ANOTHER 1968?

If “Hillary’s Women” are the cause of John McCain becoming president, they will have to live with the shame and guilt when McCain’s appointees to the Supreme Court – at least 3 staunch conservatives who will rule for decades to come - overturn Roe v Wade and young women suffer – which is to say, die - as they will. “Hillary’s Women” will share responsibility for those deaths as well as the continued killing in Iraq, and wherever is next for a new McCain War. If “Hillary’s Women” are ready and willing to live with that – and all the other consequences that will arise from another Republican administration – then they deserve every ounce of the scorn and disrespect they seem so determined to earn.

If you believe the TV talking heads – and why wouldn’t you? – there may be millions of Hillary Clinton supporters who are so… so… pissed, they’re not going to vote for the Democratic Party nominee in the upcoming election. Some have even said they will vote for the Republican, Senator John McCain.

Remind you of anyone? If you’re as old as Papa, visions of 1968 are sweeping past your eyes… protests and demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention; demands for “Justice!” confrontation with authorities; and a steadfast, dead-on, absolute refusal to vote for the party nominee, this time if it isn’t Hillary – and it won’t be! That’s exactly what happened in 1968. Many of the “best and the brightest,” the generation come of age in the 60s, they (we!) never got behind the candidacy of Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey because HHH would not back off his support of Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam. Minus his rejection of the war, they (we!) sat on our hands on Election Day. We didn’t show up. We didn’t turn out. We didn’t vote for Humphrey. Showed him, didn’t we!

Richard M. Nixon, the disgraced former Vice President, loser to JFK in 1960, loser again in 1962 in his bid to become California’s Governor… somehow this guy snatched his party’s nomination. And, believe it or not, he won the Presidency in 1968, beating Hubert Humphrey by the thinnest of margins, seven-tenths of one percent. How did he manage that? He won all 6 of the key battleground states in 1968. Nixon triumphed in Missouri by 1.13%. He won in New Jersey by 2.1%, and in Ohio by 2.2%. He won the state of Illinois – where he had claimed the 1960 election was stolen from him – by 2.9%. Nixon was victorious in California (where earlier he had been defeated for Governor) by 3.0%, and in Wisconsin, Nixon won by 3.6%.

In these 6 key states, Nixon won them all, by a total of 593,000 votes. He won because Democratic voters, angry with Hubert Humphrey – pissed just like Hillary’s voters are today – stayed home. Some maybe were so angry they actually voted for Nixon. Need you be reminded – Richard Nixon served two terms (well, almost), resigning in disgrace in August, 1974.

In 1976, when Jimmy Carter, an unknown Governor of a small state in the South, a man with no national political credentials and no experience outside Georgia, a state with a “weak Governor” system, a man hardly "Ready On Day One” ran for President as a Democrat, Hubert Humphrey was forgotten; all Democrats felt comfortable voting for their party’s nominee. Carter won, carrying 3 of the 6 key states Nixon won in 1968: California, Illinois and New Jersey. Even while Gerald Ford carried Wisconsin, Missouri and Ohio – the other 3 Nixon states – Jimmy Carter won the popular vote for all 6 states combined by more than 180,000 votes. That was a difference of more than 773,000 votes for Carter that Humphrey did not get – from the same voters! - 8 years earlier. Those 61 Electoral Votes, garnered by Carter in these battleground states meant the difference in the election’s outcome. Carter won in the Electoral College by only 57 votes. Gerald Ford was not elected to his own full term. Jimmy Carter became the President of the United States. Poor Hubert.

This time around, are we in for “Poor Hillary?” Once again some of the most intelligent, well educated, thinking Americans – the vast majority of them smart, successful women – are poised to screw things up just like an earlier generation of Democrats did. If they follow their politically suicidal tendencies, they must live with the responsibility for the consequences just as those of us who refused to vote for Humphrey in ’68 must face our role in making Richard Nixon president.

Are “Hillary’s Women” ready to wear the scarlet H?

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